into their faces.

Draxy watched them until their figures became dim, black specks, and
finally faded out of sight. Then she listened dreamily to the notes of the
slow-tolling bell; when it ceased she closed her eyes, and her thoughts
ran back, far back to the days when she was "little Draxy" and Elder
Kinney was only her pastor. Slowly she lived her life since then over
again, its joy and its sorrow alike softened in her tender, brooding
thoughts. The soft whirring sound of a bird's wings in the air roused her:
as it flew past the window she saw that it was one of the yellow-hammers,
which still built their nests in the maple-grove behind the house.

"Ah," thought she, "I suppose it can't be one of the same birds we saw
that day. But it's going on errands just the same. I wonder, dear Seth, if
mine are nearly done."

At that instant a terrible pain shot through her left side and forced a
sharp cry from her lips. She half rose exclaiming, "Reuby, oh, darling!"
and sank back in her chair unconscious.

Just as Elder Williams was concluding the communion service, the door of
the church was burst open, and old Ike, tottering into the aisle, cried
out in a shrill voice:--

"Mis' Kinney's dead! Mis' Kinney's dead!"

The scene that followed could not be told. With flying feet the whole
congregation sped up the steep hill--Angy Plummer half lifting, half
dragging Reuby, and the poor grandparents supported on each side by strong
men. As they drew near the house, they saw Draxy apparently sitting by the
open window.

"O mamma! why that's mamma," shrieked Reuby, "she was sitting just so when
we came away. She isn't dead."

Elder Williams reached the house first, Hannah met him on the threshold,
tearless.

"She dead, sir. She's cold as ice. She must ha' been dead a long time."

Old Ike had been rambling around the house, and observing from the outside
that Draxy's position was strange, had compelled Hannah to go into the
room.

"She was a smilin' just's you see her now," said Hannah, "'n' I couldn't
ha' touched her to move her more'n I could ha' touched an angel."

There are griefs, as well as joys, to which words offer insult. Draxy was
dead!

Three days later they laid her by the side of her husband, and the
gray-haired, childless old people, and the golden-haired, fatherless and
motherless boy, returned together broken-hearted to the sunny parsonage.

On the village a terrible silence, that could be felt, settl